This is the third part of this series of articles, which looks at the strengths of interpreting the word “day” in Genesis chapter 1 as a normal lunar day. The fourth and final article answers objections to this normal reading of the text. As mentioned in a previous post, any evidence or arguments I make that are not relevant to a particular position should not be considered a misrepresentation of the position, but rather my attempt to consider various views that in one way or another view the days as long periods of time.
14 When Jesus does refer to the Creation account, He refers to it as an historical fact, not allegory. He does so when referring to the creation of man and woman (Matthew 19:4) and marriage (Matthew 19:5-6). This is true also with Paul’s words about the origin of woman (1 Corinthians 11:8-9), the order of creation of man and woman, and the order of sin (1 Timothy 2:13-14). He ties the doctrine of sin (Romans 5:12-20) and the doctrine of justification (1 Corinthians 15:22) to the reality of a literal Adam and a normal reading of the creation account. James also refers to Genesis as describing creation rather than evolution when he refers to man as created in the image of God (James 3:9).
The Scripture simply looks back on the description of creation as recorded in Genesis 1-3 as a matter of completed historical fact (Mark 13:19; John 1:3, 1:10; Acts 4:24, 14:15; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2, 10, 11:3; Revelation 4:11, 10:6, 14:7).
15 Revelation 21 pictures the creation of the new heaven and earth, and one wonders if those who favor the days as representing indefinite periods of time believe the second creation will require billions of years before it will be inhabitable.
16 Jesus refers to man being there at the “beginning;” consequently, it seems an unwarranted stretch to make creation of the earth billions of years prior to the creation of man (Matthew 19:4).
17 Scripture teaches that God is compassionate (Deuteronomy 4:31), has great mercies (2 Samuel 24:14; Psalm 86:15) upon the weak and needy (Psalm 72:12-14), and blesses those who show mercy (Matthew 5:7). God is this by nature, which seems irreconcilable with Him creating via evolution since evolution is a brutal, horrifically torturous process that is merciless and actually thrives on the elimination of the weak or needy.
18 Evolutionists argue that nature does not give certain evidence of design, but the Scripture says that it does and that evidence has been “clearly seen” so that men are “without excuse” (Romans 1:18). If a struggle for the survival of the fittest and the elimination of the weakest is what is really going on, how are God’s glorious power and attributes clearly seen?
19 Genesis 1-3 lays the foundation of every major area of doctrine in the Scripture. For example, God (theology proper), trustworthiness of God’s Word (bibliology), creation (cosmology), the uniqueness of man created in the image of God, distinct from the rest of creation (anthropology), sin (harmartiology), redemption (soteriology), angels (angelology), and future things (eschatology). Corruption of Genesis will necessarily, if consistency prevails, lead to further corruptions of Scripture and scriptural teachings elsewhere.
20 Genesis 1-2 depicts man as the apex of creation while evolution depicts him as the result of an unguided process of death, pain, and destruction; Genesis 1-2 presents man in the image of God while evolution presents him in the image of the material world; Genesis 1-2 presents man as over the animal world while evolution depicts man as from, dependent on, and a part of the animal world. While day-age theorists are quick to reject those kinds of consequences of evolution, they are more than willing to allow evolutionary cosmology to serve as the hermeneutical guide for interpreting the length of days, which I believe results in an incoherent hermeneutic.
21 To my knowledge, there is not a place in Scripture that compellingly teaches that the creation account should be taken as anything except a clear factual report of how God created heaven and earth and how long the process took.
22 Man received life from divine inbreathing according to biblical creation (Genesis 1:26); whereas in the evolutionary model he received it through a cruel life and death struggle.
23 The outstanding feature of Genesis 1-2 is “In the beginning God” and God alone, the most glorious, majestic, powerful being one could imagine created all that there is. His glorious, limitless, sovereign power and majesty are reemphasized each time He instantaneously brings into existence an aspect of the universe by merely speaking it into existence, which is something that is eternally beyond human understanding. The cumulative knowledge and power of the entire human race is infinitesimal in comparison. However, the day-age theory undeniably disguises that overarching declaration, which the simple reading of it magnifies. Day-age theorists may argue that their theory does not diminish His glorious attributes, but they argue quite futilely that it does not diminish the display of these attributes.
